A battery charger is a power supply with controllable voltage, current and power limits.
Chargers can be operatively connected in a network, within which one charger is assigned the role of master and the other chargers are assigned the roles of slaves.
In charger networks in the prior art, the roles of master and slave are fixed. Moreover, charger networks in the prior art are configured to have the master provide the required amount of power to the load by subdividing power demand equally among all the chargers in the network. Examples of charger networks in the prior art are described in U.S. Pat. No. 7,059,769 to Potega and in U.S. Pat. No. 7,471,066 to Ambrosio et al.
Charger networks in the prior art are rigid, because the role of master is limited to a single pre-assigned master and slaves cannot be added or subtracted during a charging cycle. Moreover, charger networks in the prior art cannot be configured to operate with different numbers of chargers at different times to meet specific operational objectives, such as maximizing efficiency of charge at one time or speed of charge at another time.